The Anstis-Eedy-Huston letters consists of materials based primarily on 7 letters, dated 1826-1838, sent to Robert Eedy (or Eady, later Eddy) in northern New Brunswick by his relatives, James Huston (or Hewston) and Wills and Lydia Anstis, impoverished Methodist cottagers, cotton weavers, and schoolmasters who lived in the vicinity of Bandon and Ballinadee, County Cork. The letters also include: an 1830 letter to Eedy from another Cork Methodist, Isaac Draper, who emigrated to New Brunswick and sought advice; Robert Eedy's business accounts, 1834-36 and 1840, in Bathurst, New Brunswick; and an 1877 letter by William Eedy, Sr., which provides historical and genealogical data about the family.
Per Professor Kerby A. Miller: 'The 1826-38 letters of James Huston and Wills and Lydia Anstis reflect the eagerness to emigrate among southern Irish Protestants, of middle- and lower-class status, who felt increasingly alienated from and endangered in Ireland for two principal reasons: first, by their increasing impoverishment, caused in part by the collapse of southern cotton manufacturing, of which Bandon had been a principal centre; and, second, by resurgent Catholic nationalism as in Daniel O'Connell's successful campaign for Catholic Emancipation of the late 1820s (a major topic in the letters), and by the so-called Tithe War and Whig reform administrations of the 1830s. Their religious and ideological response was enthusiasm for the ""New Reformation,"" an evangelical crusade (inspired and funded by wealthy Irish and British evangelicals), designed broadly to counter the influences of the French Revolution and specifically to convert Irish Catholics to Protestantism. It was spearheaded by Dublin-based organizations such as the Society for the Suppression of Vice, which temporarily employed James Huston in one of its local schools.'
